Using variables in printf format

Question

Suppose I have a file like this:

$ cat a
hello this is a sentence
and this is another one

And I want to print the first two columns with some padding in between them. As this padding may change, I can for example use 7:

$ awk '{printf "%7-s%s\n", $1, $2}' a
hello  this
and    this

Or 17:

$ awk '{printf "%17-s%s\n", $1, $2}' a
hello            this
and              this

Or 25, or... you see the point: the number may vary.

Then a question popped: is it possible to assign a variable to this N, instead of hardcoding the integer in the %N-s format?

I tried these things without success:

$ awk '{n=7; printf "%{n}-s%s\n", $1, $2}' a
%{n}-shello
%{n}-sand

$ awk '{n=7; printf "%n-s%s\n", $1, $2}' a
%n-shello
%n-sand

Ideally I would like to know if it is possible to do this. If it is not, what would be the best workaround?

Answer 1

If you use * in your format string, it gets a number from the arguments

awk '{printf "%*-s%s\n", 17, $1, $2}' file
hello            this
and              this

awk '{printf "%*-s%s\n", 7, $1, $2}' file
hello  this
and    this

---

As read in The GNU Awk User’s Guide #5.5.3 Modifiers for printf Formats:

The C library printf’s dynamic width and prec capability (for example, "%*.*s") is supported. Instead of supplying explicit width and/or prec values in the format string, they are passed in the argument list. For example:

w = 5
p = 3
s = "abcdefg"
printf "%*.*s\n", w, p, s

is exactly equivalent to:

s = "abcdefg"
printf "%5.3s\n", s

Answer 2

does this count?

idea is building the "dynamic" fmt, used for printf.

kent$   awk '{n=7;fmt="%"n"-s%s\n"; printf fmt, $1, $2}' f 
hello  this
and    this